This easy CSS text shadow tutorial will show you step by step how to create 3D font with multiple css shadows by stacking multiple CSS3 text shadow properties, then go a step further and use the CSS text transform and CSS transition properties to make the 3D text pop out / zoom on hover!

Please keep in mind this 3D CSS text shadow effect is pure CSS (No JavaScript) and the technique only fully works in modern browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, It will fall back gracefully to plain text when viewed in any Internet Explorer browser.

How CSS shadow text works

Stacking multiple CSS Shadows

You don’t have to stack multiple css shadows but it does create a better looking 3D CSS text effect.

The Tutorial (Creating the 3D CSS text shadow)

You will want to pick colours darker than the original text colour for the shadow, so for this example I will be using white text, with a 2 level deep grey shadow, followed by a 4 level deep near black shadow to create that 3D text illusion.

For this example I’m going to target a H2 tag, but you can target any HTML element, link, class, ID etc.

Well, you can stop there if you like, you have your basic 3D CSS text illusion, using multiple shadows.
However, let’s go two steps further and make the text size increase on hover by using the CSS text transform property to have the 3D text pop out / zoom in & out on hover! Then have it fade in and out smoothly with a CSS transition, pure CSS3, no JavaScript required!

Increasing text size on hover with CSS text transform

You can make the text bigger by changing the (1.1) value, (2.0) would be double the original size.
This instant CSS text transform on hover could use some improvement however, so we are going to make it fade in and fade out over a few milliseconds.

About: Gonzalo Ordóñez Arias (GENZOMAN)

Gonzalo Ordoñez Arias, Is an extraordinary digital artist and painter of fantasy art. He was born in Arica, in the north of Chile (a port city) and now lives in the capital, Santiago. He started copying drawings of his favorite cartoonists and comics at school. At that time, manga and videogames were a huge hit and as such became a huge inspiration. He now dedicates his full-time on freelance fantasy art & character design Illustration.

All work shown here may not be used without the explicit permission of the fantasy artist, aka Genzoman.

Pirates & Historical Middle Eastern Character Designs

Aladdin The original story of Aladdin is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It concerns an impoverished young ne’er-do-well named Aladdin, who is recruited by a sorcerer from the Maghreb (who passes himself off as the brother of Aladdin’s late father) to retrieve a wonderful oil lamp from a booby-trapped magic [more]

Sinbad the Sailor is a persian story-cycle of ancient Middle Eastern origin. Sinbad, the hero of the stories is a sailor. These stories recount the fantastic adventures of Sinbad during his voyages throughout the seas east of Africa and south of Asia as told in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights [more]

Blackbeard, Edward Teach or Edward Thatch, was a notorious English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of the American colonies during the early 18th century. He quickly acquired his own ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, and from 1717 became a feared pirate. [more]

The Hashshashin (from which the word assassin is thought to originate), was the Persian designation of the Nizari during the Middle Ages. Tthey became famous in the XI century by their strategic activity of targeted assassinations against political, military leaders or kings. During this period, was their [more]

Emiliano Zapata is one of the most important figures of the hispanic history. Emiliano Zapata Salazar was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, which broke out in 1910, and which was initially directed against the president Porfirio Díaz. He formed and commanded an important revolutionary force [more]

Shajar al-Durr (Arabic: "Strings of Pearls") was the widow of the Ayyubid Sultan as-Salih Ayyub who played a crucial role after his death during the Seventh Crusade against Egypt (1249-1250). She was regarded by Muslim historians and chroniclers of the Mamluk time as being of Turkic origin [more]

Scherezade is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights. The frame tale goes that every day Shahryar would marry a new virgin, and every day he would send yesterday’s wife to be beheaded. This was done in anger, having found out that his first wife [more]

Morgiana is a clever slave girl from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. She is initially in Cassim’s household but on his death she joins his brother Ali Baba and through her quick wittedness she saves Ali’s life many times and eventually kills his worst enemy, the leader of the Forty Thieves. As reward [more]

Greek Gods, Heroes and Fiends From Mythology

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky and thunder. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" also derives certain iconographic traits from the [more]

Hades, In Greek mythology, Hades and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated the Titans and claimed rulership over the universe ruling the underworld, air, and sea, respectively; the solid earth, long the province of Gaia, was available to all three concurrently. Because of his association with [more]

Poseidon (Also known as Neptune) was the god of the sea and, as "Earth-Shaker," of earthquakes in Greek mythology. In most accounts he is swallowed by Cronus at birth but later saved, with his other brothers and sisters, by Zeus. However in some versions of the story, he, like his brother did not [more]

Leonidas ( literally "lion’s son") was a king of Sparta, who was believed in mythology to be a descendant of Heracles, possessing much of the latter’s strength and bravery. The date of Leonidas’ birth is not known, although Paul Cartledge argues he must have been born around 540 BC. This, [more]

Ares, In Greek mythology, Ares is the son of Zeus and Hera. Though often referred to as the Olympian god of warfare, he is more accurately the god of bloodlust, or slaughter personified: "Ares is apparently an ancient abstract noun meaning throng of battle, war." He is an important Olympian god in the [more]

Medusa, from greek mythology was a monstrous chthonic female character; gazing upon her would turn onlookers to stone. She was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head as a weapon, until giving it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In classical antiquity and today [more]

Delphi is perhaps best-known for the oracle at the sanctuary that was dedicated to Apollo during the classical period. According to Aeschylus in the prologue of the Eumenides, it had origins in prehistoric times and the worship of Gaia. In the last quarter of the 8th century BC there is a steady [more]

Fantasy Art of Egyptian Gods, Pharaoh’s and Prophets.

Anubis is the name for a jackal-headed god associated with mummification and the afterlife in Egyptian mythology. Anubis was the most important god of the Dead but he was replaced during the Middle Kingdom by Osiris. He takes names in connection with his funerary role, such as He who [more]

Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god. By the Fifth Dynasty he had become a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the mid-day sun. In later Egyptian dynastic times, Ra was merged with the god Horus. He was associated with the falcon or hawk. When in the New [more]

Ramesses II (known as Ramesses The Great and also known as Ozymandias in the Greek sources ) was the third Egyptian pharaoh of the Nineteenth dynasty. He is often regarded as Egypt’s greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful pharaoh. He is believed to have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus. [more]

Moses is a Biblical Hebrew religious leader, lawgiver, and prophet. He is the most important prophet in Judaism, and also an important prophet of Christianity. According to the book of Exodus, Moses was born in a time when war threatened and Pharaoh who was worried that they might help Egypt’s [more]

Religion, Demon & Angel Fantasy Art Illustrations

Bath Kol (Hebrew: daughter of the voice or daughter of a voice) is a "heavenly or divine voice which proclaims God’s will or judgment, His deeds and His commandments to individuals or to a number of persons, to rulers, communities, and even to whole nations." It was "identified with the [more]

Michael is an archangel in Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition. He is viewed as the field commander of the Army of God. He is mentioned by name in the Book of Daniel, the Book of Jude and the Book of Revelation. In the book of Daniel, Michael appears as "one of the chief princes" who [more]

Gabriel, is an angel who serves as a messenger from God. He first appears in the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible. In some traditions he is regarded as one of the archangels, or as the angel of death. He is also known as Saint Gabriel to some Christian denominations. [more]

Lucifer generally refers to the Devil, although the name is not applied to him in the New Testament. The use of the name "Lucifer" in reference to a fallen angel stems from an interpretation of Isaiah 14:3–20, a passage that speaks of a particular Babylonian King, to whom it gives a title that refers [more]

Lilith, Legends told about Lilith are ancient. One story is that God created Adam and Lilith. She demanded equality with Adam, failing to achieve it, she left him in anger. This is sometimes accompanied by a Muslim legend that after leaving Adam Lilith slept with Satan, thus creating [more]

Count Dracula is a centuries-old vampire, sorcerer and Transylvanian nobleman, who claims to be a descended from Attila the Hun. He inhabits a decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains. Contrary to the vampires of Eastern European folklore, which are portrayed as repulsive, corpse-like [more]

Eve was, according to the Book of Genesis, the first woman created by God, and an important figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Her husband was Adam, from whose rib God created her to be his companion. She succumbs to the serpent’s temptation via the suggestion that to eat the forbidden [more]

Goliath, is the Philistine warrior, famous for his battle with the young David, the future king of Israel. Post-Classical Jewish traditions stressed Goliath’s status as the representative of paganism, in contrast to David, the champion of the God of Israel; Christian tradition gave him a distinctively Christian [more]

Oriental Mythology, Fantasy Art & Folktales

Guanyin, commonly known in English as the Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin is also revered by Chinese Daoists (Taoists) as an Immortal. However, in Daoist mythology, Guanyin has other origination stories which are not directly directly related to Avalokiteśvara. [more]

Kaguya Hime, one day, while walking in the bamboo forest, an old, childless bamboo cutter came across a mysterious, shining stalk of bamboo. After cutting it open, he found inside it a baby the size of his thumb. He rejoiced to find such a beautiful girl and took her home. He and his wife raised [more]

Amaterasu is described in the Kojiki as the sun goddess who was born from Izanagi’s left eye. She was also accompanied by her siblings Susanoo, the storm deity, and Tsukuyomi, the moon deity. In the Kojiki, Amaterasu is described as the goddess from which all light emanates and is often referred [more]

More Mythology Character Designs & Female Mermaid Art

Merrow is the Scottish and Irish Gaelic equivalent of the mermaid and mermen of other cultures. Merrow-maidens are reputed to lure young men to follow them beneath the waves where afterwards they live in an enchanted state. Merrows wear a special hat called a cohuleen druith which enables [more]

Sirens of Greek mythology are sometimes portrayed in later folklore as mermaid-like; in fact, some languages use the same word for both bird and fish creatures. Much like sirens, mermaids would sometimes sing to people and gods and enchant them, distracting them from their work [more]

Iara, also spelled Uira or Yara, is the name of a figure from Brazilian mythology based on ancient Tupi and Guaraní mythology. The word derives from Old Tupi yîara = y + îara (water + lord/lady) = lady of the lake (water queen). She is seen as either a water nymph, siren, or mermaid depending upon [more]

Alraune, The basis of the story of Alraune dates to the Middles Ages in Germany. The humanoid-shaped Mandrake root or Mandragora officinarum was widely believed to be produced by the fluids of hanged men under the gallows. Alchemists claimed that when hanged men broke his necks, vital fluids [more]

Brynhildr is a shieldmaiden and a valkyrie in Norse mythology, where she appears as a main character in the Völsunga saga. Brynhildr is the daughter of Budli. She was ordered to decide a fight between two kings: Hjalmgunnar and Agnar. The valkyrie knew that Odin himself preferred the older king [more]

Is your favourite mythology character / fantasy art not on the list?
who is it or which of these is your favourite character design or story?

About: Zach Bush

Zach Bush is a freelance illustrator with a talent for photo manipulation, he is based outside of Washington D.C. As of 2006, he has diligently worked to perfect his skills by consistently taking on new projects by various corporate clients. Zach’s success is largely due to his perfectionist nature, as he will never release a project until he is 100% confident it can not be improved upon any further.

All work shown here may not be used without the explicit permission of the artist.

There are quite a few spam techniques used by people on Twitter who want to get their content noticed. Well, I don’t want to talk about spam-spam but more, about ‘missuse’ of Twitter Hashtags and what’s become of direct messages. I mean they might as well dump DM’s and be done with it as far as I’m concerned, but let’s delve a little deeper. This is more of a discussion and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on each point below in the comments section. Let’s start off by revising…

The hashtags original purpose

A hashtag is similar to other web tags- it helps add tweets to a category. Hashtags have the ‘hash’ or ‘pound’ symbol (#) preceding the tag, like so: #traffic, #followfriday, #hashtag. Hashtags can occur anywhere in the tweet… – Twitter

How many hashtags make a tweet, spam?

2, 3, 4, 5 – Where do we draw the line?

3 or more is on the verge of making the tweet feel ’spammy’ which would make most users treat you & your tweet with disdain and in most cases, plain ignore it, even if it’s a great link.How many hashtags does it take before you ignore the tweet or the user?

do you consider Hashtag Slang spam?

The use of the hashtag in this scenario goes against what the hashtag is meant for, however It gives the tweet some extra oomph. In most cases this would be harmless if the hash tag you’re using is not popular. There are cases where you may unintentionally be tweeting your hashtag into a conversation that has nothing to do with it, and in that case I would consider it; spam.

For all I know, #godieinafire could be the name of a band, has this ever happened to you before?
Occasionally you see tweets in a hashtag stream that are obviously out of place, and more than likely unintentionally, because let’s face it, when you type #godieinafire, you don’t check if the tag is being used for something first.

Have you ever had an interesting conversation start from the ‘misuse’ of a Twitter hashtag?

Direct messages

Ah, direct messages, the sewer mutants of the twitter underworld. Generally when you get a DM you are immediately suspicious of that user as a spammer or some back-ally marketing team. A huge percentage of DM’s are automated ‘thank you for following’ or self promotions to ‘check out my cool site’ which – if you think about it, is not so bad. Why then, do we hate it so much?

Are you a victim of improper hashtag usage, a ‘innocent’ culprit, do you think direct messages are useful? Put forward your points if you agree or disagree, in the comments below.

When was the last time you updated your Curriculum Vitae (CV) , Resume or cover letter?

Regardless of what you call it, the answer is likely the same – never.

Unless you’re looking for a job, your CV is probably sitting around somewhere as a boring text document gathering dust, in fact I’d wager you can’t remember were you put your CV! Well, that’s how it was for me.

After discovering a CV inspiration post with 40 or so CV samples, of which none were usable templates, and the rest were overly creative, I decided it was time to update my curriculum vitae template. Better to keep it up to date instead of finding 5 years down the line,you can’t recall what you did, when.

In my opinion, a CV or resume needs to be simple, clean and readable, with a dash of creativity that doesn’t overshadow the information, with this in mind I set out to create a nice clean and creative free Photoshop CV template that anyone with a little Photoshop knowledge can modify to suit their needs.

I went with a professional black & white look with a slightly de-saturated photograph. The emphasis is on the typography, the font’s are free and packaged into the download, alternatively if you just want to get your grubby fingers on these lovely free fonts, (which are also CSS3 compatible / allowed ) you can grab Raleway (The thin font) or Bebas Neue here (Thick Font) The icons used are from Icon Finder, you can download the CV template at the end of this page, enjoy!

About: Irina Batkova

Be it professional branding, thematic illustrations, hand-drawn concept art or original graphic and web design — they are all crafted skills of her trade. She graduated as a painter, starting her graphic designer career in an advertising agency in 2003. Then she worked for EFM Solutions, Moscow office, and in 2005 came to Articul Media, a well-known group of web design and branding companies, as Creative designer.

Rich practical experience has enabled Irina to start independent action in 2009. She now lives in Moscow and works with her team of professionals.

All work shown here may not be used without the explicit permission of the artist.

Great ampersand fonts can be pretty tough to find, what’s a ampersand? Well it’s the “and” sign? ( & ), and it seems everyone loves using this little fellow in all sorts of cool ampersand designs, however I keep seeing the same ampersand font face, if you are a designer you’re probably familiar with the accused, but I digress, since it’s an great elegant font and works especially well for ampersand fonts – I’m guilty of adding it & similar fonts to the list.

Most ampersand fonts listed are licensed, meaning you may have to purchase them, some are free fonts, however, most of the great fonts are also packed with certain applications, so check if you have the font on your windows pc or mac before downloading.

Not sure how to go about creating a Web design? I often get asked for resources or good places to learn about basic Web design tutorials and ‘slicing’, from designers or new employee’s who want to try their hand at Web site design.

This is a round-up of some of the better Web design tutorials out there for designers and Photoshop users who want to break into or improve their Web site design skills, and optionally wish to learn how to convert their Design’s or PSD’s into standards compliant functional HTML/CSS Websites using modern methods of coding (no tables here!).

[ Tutorial ] Walkthrough of coding up a graphical website layout into valid, standards compliant XHTML and CSS. Starting with exporting the individual images from the Photoshop file through to building the pages.

[ Tutorial ] This lengthly tutorial for beginners takes you through the process of both designing and coding a simple blog-style web-page. Paying special attention to making the design flexible and accessible by using clean and simple XHTML and CSS.

Photographer: Elena Kalis

An expert underwater photographer, Elena Kalis’s work has been featured in several publications and her artistic underwater photo’s are simply lovely, armed with her underwater digital camera she took these amazing shots with a Alice in Wonderland design aesthetic, appropriately dubbed ‘Alice in Water-land’

All under-water photo’s shown here may not be used without the explicit permission of the photographer.

A Brief history of Dragons

Dragons are legendary creatures, typically with serpentine or otherwise reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures.

There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies, and the Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan, Korea and other Asian countries.

The two traditions may have evolved separately, but have influenced each to a certain extent, particularly with the cross-cultural contact of recent centuries. The English word “dragon” derives from Greek δράκων (drákōn), “dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake”, which probably comes from the verb δρακεῖν (drakeîn) “to see clearly”. Read more…

Please be aware that none of the images in this article are made by me, but are a collection of dragons from across the internet.